One of Sara's coworker's daughter's birthday party was held at Winterlodge, an outdoor ice skating facility in Palo Alto.  It's a pretty neat thing to be able to skate outdoors in +20C weather.  The ice quality was pretty bad, but who cares when you're skating in such a warm and sunny environment??  And it was Cam's first time on ice, so Sara and I were pretty excited.

Cam's very first time on ice

We imported kid's skates from Toronto for Cam, the type that are double blades for easier balancing and strap onto your regular shoes.  Margaret and Winston were kind enough to get them from Canadian Tire, but there was only one colour left.  Hot pink.  Yes, Cam was wearing hot pink skates.  Cam got TONS of comments on them.  As I was strapping them onto his shoes, the owner walks by, notices them, and says "wow, I haven't seen cheese graters since I was a kid in Minneapolis!!"  At least she knew what they were, other people had never seen beginner skates like these before and there were many stares and other bigger kids said stuff like "wow, two blades, that's so cool!"  Every single girl or mom who passed by gushed over the hot pinkness of the skates.  Meanwhile, I'm hoping Cam's a natural skater and I'm trying to let him stand on his own.  He lasts about 15 nanoseconds before his feet go flying out from under him.  He was unable to stand on his own, and I ended up skating bent over holding onto him the whole time.  He loved it though, full of smiles as we cruised around the rink.

Take a look at the few pics we snapped, which include Cam eating a banana on his own, and our latest visit to a playground.  Here's a quick video we shot of the ice skating shenanigans:

We flew to Orlando to hang out with Chuck for a couple days prior to our cruise.

Sara, being the seasoned traveler that she is, booked the end seats in a row of three.  When we got to the airport, they said the flight was full so we figured we're out of luck on having an empty seat between us, but lo and behold, nobody showed up to claim that seat and we had a lot of room available for Cam.

Goofing on the flight

We took full advantage of the seat - of course when Cam was napping he was laying across the seat, but when he was awake and started to fuss, we sat him upright and buckled him in.  He loved playing with the buckle, and once he started to lose interest we gave him the earphones and he enjoyed hanging them off his head and looking like a complete goofball.  We actually left Cam buckled in the seat for the landing and a couple flight attendants passed by and didn't say anything - either Cam looks legit or they were just too tired to bother.

On a side note, he plays with my earphones at home and he actually tries to put them in his ear.  I wonder where he learned that from - I've never used the earphones in front of him.  He must just be naturally brilliant.

Anyways, back to Orlando.  It was great fun staying in Chuck's great condo for a couple days.  He's in a very nice area that has many amenities within walking distance.  There also happens to be a lot of senior citizens in his area, as evidenced by the numerous Seniors crossing signs.  :)

We spent the day at a nearby park with a very nice kids playground and Cam had tons of fun on the slides.  At the end of the slide, he'd just lay there on the bottom with a huge grin on his face.  In the evening, we went down to Downtown Disney and Cam was totally in awe over all the shiny flashing lights everywhere.  He got a little scared at the TRex cafe when the big animatronic dinosaur started to move and growl, but he loved the Lego store's gigantic lego creations.

Overall we had a lot of fun hanging out with Chuck in Orlando.  Take a look at the pictures.

I caught Cam picking his nose for the first time last night.  It was actually sorta cute - he had a very curious expression as he was mining for booger nuggets.  I don't want him to develop this as a habit so I pulled his hand away from his nose, but I wonder if that makes picking his nose an even more tempting activity - the thrill of doing something parents don't want and all that.  He *is* demonstrating Terrible Two qualities, after all, perhaps this would become a rebellious activity on his part?

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Winston, Margaret, and Wesley arrived in town last Wednesday night.  I was worried the boys would have mad fights over toys, but they've been great playing together.  They've spent a ton of time just chasing each other around the condo, and they were dancing up a storm on their first night of hanging out.  I've actually never seen Cam dance so wildly before - Wes' fun energy is contagious.  They started to have sharing issues last night, starting with a fight over a Thomas book.  It moved onto ownership of a nerf football, luckily we have two footballs so that screamfest was resolved before it went into full gear.

Double teaming T-Rex

Yesterday was a lazy Sunday afternoon.  Winston was off on a bicycle ride, Margaret was doing some online studying, and Sara wanted to nap.  The kids, of course, were full of energy so I offered to take em both out to give Sara and Margaret some quiet time.  I figured I'd take em on a Costco shopping run.  Costco's gimungous shopping carts have seating room for two toddlers on the top basket so it would be easy to control them and probably be quite fun.  By the time we had prepped everything for me to head out, however, Cam was yawning so we let him nap with Sara and I ended up taking Wes out for a walk in the neighbourhood.

Wes is soooo talkative, able to say many actual words - during our walk he would be constantly pointing things out and saying various things.  Too bad I could only understand a fraction of what he was saying.  At one point, he would point up into the clear blue sky and say "Bibble".  I have NO idea what he was talking about, as there was nothing up there.  At a loss, I had to say "aaah, right, bibble!  That's fun, isn't it?  Yes, bibble."  That seemed to satisfy him and he continued babbling about other stuff, having a grand ol time.

I'm a little disappointed that I didn't get to take the boys out on my own.  I think that'd be an interesting experience, especially getting them in and out of the car.  I guess I'd have to get the shopping cart first and transfer them directly into the cart so there's no wondering off into traffic.

I've posted some pictures from the first couple days of their stay, take a look and enjoy!